


Whisper Thin: A Promise Keeps

by forgerofdreams



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012), The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: AU, Ghosts, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgerofdreams/pseuds/forgerofdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John could see things, people, that weren't there, ever since he was very young. He just hadn't known how important those things would be...until they were gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whisper Thin: A Promise Keeps

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea that popped into my head from a prompt that bloomed into something I can't even control.

She was the first.

Curled up in a hospital bed, arms wrapped around a ragged and torn stuffed rabbit, John had stared at the wall, and wondered if he was stuck in a dream. His young mind couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened to him, his dreams filled with bright lights, and the screeching growl of metal crunching against metal appearing every time his eyes close. 

He’d thought she was part of his dreams, her pale skin seeming to flicker in the faint flourescents of the hallway and giving her a ‘not of this world’ air. John just hadn’t known how right he was at the time.

“Have you seen my mommy?” John’s voice was soft, broken and ragged around the edges as he stared up at the woman standing next to his bedside, assuming she was a nurse of some sort. She didn’t say anything at first, simply standing there, and looking down at the young boy before she reached out a pale hand and slid it across the side of his face. John couldn’t stop himself from shivering at the cold touch, ice sliding through his veins in the pass of a moment, before she was gone.

John had rubbed his eyes with one tiny hand, the other clutching to his stuffed rabbit as his heart tried to beat out of his chest. They fell closed again, though, as that same hand smoothed through his hair, combing through the errant curls in an almost soothing manner. A soft voice slid through the air, just as faint and airy as her touch, “She’s home.”

It wasn’t until a few days later that his father came in to tell him what had happened. His mother was dead. Killed almost instantly in the crash. But what they didn’t tell him, was that John had died too. Brought back to life, nearly five minutes later by the paramedic that had pulled him from the wreckage. Everything had seemed fine, all of his vitals coming back normal, but what they never really realized, was that people who are gone that long…come back changed.

From that day forward, John had the unfortunate problem of being able to see people who weren’t, well, there. Ghosts of people gone and passed, bemoaning the loss of their life, or, more often than not, wanting John to help them pass on. He quickly grew up with the stigma of the strange child who talked to himself all the time. 

Abandoned by his father to an orphanage after an unfortunate run-in with a bookie, his only constant the pale spectre of a woman that became almost like a mother to him. She didn’t speak much, simply followed him from place to place as his father moved them around. Inserting herself into his life in simple ways, a reminder here, a soft word of encouragement there, until John didn’t know what he would do without her there.

Growing up in the orphanage, things only seemed to get worse for him, the other boys finding problems with his antisocialness as John fought off the ghosts of the children unlucky enough to live in Gotham in an underfunded orphanage. Plagued on all sides by the ghosts of the living, and the dead, he quickly became a recluse and avoiding talking to any and everyone, but the one ghost who didn’t ask for anything from him. 

Not once in the years she had been by his side had she asked him to help her move on. Settle the debts on her soul so that she could ascend like so many other before her. John never asked, the haunted shade in her eyes telling him more than her own words could, that there was too much there that John wouldn’t even know where to start.

It wasn’t until he was sixteen, aging out of the orphanage, unlucky enough to be just this side of too odd to be adopted, that he finally learned her name. Curled up in a tunnel underneath the city, she began to talk with him in soft syllables, a soothing hand sliding through his hair as he imagined her body pressed against his was as warm as his own. It was that night he learned her name was ‘Natasha’and she had died before her time, but hadn’t they all. 

In between the cold, hard facts, John heard the words she didn’t dare to speak, the reasons behind why she was here, now, comforting a lost boy who had nothing left in the world. She was just as lost and broken as he was.

Over the next few years, he scraped his way up the underground, using the ghosts of those that had been killed before to further himself until he was firmly ensconced in their ranks. That’s when rumors of a Natalia Romanova slid into his consciousness, words whispered of a woman that had been feared by all those around her. Her prowess and skill unmatched by all until one night she’d disappeared, and hadn’t been seen again. The description matching the same woman who John had become attached to since that night long ago.

He asked her about it, later, in the privacy of his own room, laying on his side with her mirroring him, not a foot away, and only received a cryptic answer in response. Nothing more and nothing less than what she’d given him his entire life, but the first time, he reached out and tried to touch her. Unable to stop himself as his fingers slid along the outline of her form, deep down wishing that the air beneath his fingers was solid and warm to the touch, but…it wasn’t, and it never would be.

He felt his heart break a little more, the love that had grown from admiration to something deeper crippling the higher functioning of his brain as he whispered out, “I love you.”

What he didn’t expect, though, was for a brilliant smile to break out over her face, startling a breath from John’s chest as he felt his lips curl to match it. Her form started to glow around the edges as her hand reached out to smooth along the side of his face, as it had so many years ago, but instead of the familiar shiver coursing down his spine all he felt was warmth.

Gasping softly, he reached his hand up, and rested it atop her own, somehow able to twine their fingers together against his own cheek as his brow furrowed, “What…”

Her smile softened around the edges as her form seemed to fade, she pulled John’s hand towards her lips, pressing a light kiss to the back of his hand as her words whispered into the darkness of his room, “I only ever wanted to be loved for who I was.” 

John felt his heart start to beat rapidly in his chest, willing the inevitable break to keep from occurring as he anticipated what was going to happen next. “Thank you, John. For everything.” 

She leaned closer to press a light kiss to his forehead, her thumb wiping away a tear that had escaped from the corner of his eye as he pressed them closed, not wanting to see her fade. Not wanting to see the only thing that still mattered to him leave him, not again. 

With one last whisper, the brightness pressing against the back of his eyelids, and the soft touch curled against the side of his face disappeared, and John felt a sob tear its way out of his chest as she disappeared. Only this time, he knew, it was for good. The only solace he had, was in the words he could still feel reverberating in the shell of his ears, pulling the broken pieces of his heart back together, and taping them together as best they could before the time happened that they could fully be brought together again. He didn’t know how long it would take, or what would bring him to the inevitable end, but…he knew, at least then, he could finally be happy.

“ _I’ll be waiting.”_


End file.
